Moloch
Moloch ("Mol(o)" or "Pink") is a solo hero unit (Dark Stalker) for Hell. He is an excellent starter hero since he revives and the player only needs to micro one unit, but his incredible array of spells also makes him a versatile and potent unit in the hands of a skilled player. Basics If Zadkiel is the invisible blade of heaven, Moloch is the swiss army knife of Hell. Like Zadkiel, Moloch gains EXP from killing enemy units, which increases its attack, health, and shields, and can revive, but loses 20% of his EXP when he dies. While Moloch's attack is not as powerful as Zadkiel's, Moloch possesses five abilities, more than any other unit in the game, which makes Moloch an extremely useful character. However, this also means that dying early on severely hampers Moloch's ability to recover damage, as the reduced damage dealt makes it harder to finish off enemy units. Moloch is versatile; he can both be a support unit, protecting tanks and other elites and saving heroes, or a stealthy assassin, using a combination of scourges, blink, and cloak to kill enemy heroes. Abilities Blink (B) Blink teleports Moloch, costs 25 energy, and has a 10 second timer. It's extremely useful for escaping traps or getting the last shot on a fleeing enemy hero and has 7 range. Life Steal (E) Life Steal allows Moloch uses 2 energy to gain 75 HP with every attack, and the ability is toggled on and off rather than used actively. Moloch can actually heal by shooting both allies and enemies, so in severe emergency situations, shooting allies might be necessary. Scourge © Moloch can spawn a scourge for 40 energy each that deals 1000 damage to air units by suiciding themselves. The scourge ability also has a 3 charge counter that prevents more than 3 from being spawned in quick succession, though the number of charges recovers slowly at a rate of one every thirty seconds. Being a flying unit, scourges also provide vision up cliffs, in case Moloch has none and needs to take out a tank or other unit. Wraith Form (W) Moloch can temporarily cloak himself or allied units, including buildings, for 10 seconds and increase movement speed by 30% for that duration. Using Wraith Form, Moloch can surreptitiously deal damage to Heaven's units or help allied heroes flee safely. Transfuse (T) Moloch can transfuse friendly hell units for 500 hp per transfuse at the cost of 350 of Moloch's own health points. The ability has 3 charges, after which a 6 second cooldown timer begins before he can transfuse again. This is often used on fellow Hell heroes to keep them alive or on elites like tanks which are extremely important. Strategy With his variety of skills and ranged attack, there are several general ways to play Moloch, and every player ends up playing with a mix of them. Here are some suggested strategies: Supporting Pushes Moloch's lifesteal, life transfer, and cloak abilities make him extremely capable as a support hero for Hell. One key way Moloch can help is by increasing the survivability of Hell heroes; if Moloch uses all of his life transfer charges and cloaks a fleeing Hell hero, then the hero will have 1500 more life (which is nearly half of Abbadon's total HP!) and will also be faster and invisible, forcing Heaven to spend a scan if they want to finish the hero off. Keep in mind that even if the Life Transfers cause Moloch to lose enough HP to die in one hit, Moloch will come back, while the Hell hero will not. Another way Moloch can aid pushes is by ensuring the survivability of key elite units. This effect is most prominent when Moloch helps Asmodeus. Asmodeus' tanks are powerful, but if the number of tanks is too small they are very vulnerable to enemy fire, so every tank counts. The strategy of Heaven players is to rush in quickly when the tanks are relatively unguarded and focus fire the tanks down one by one until Asmo is vulnerable to flanking action. However, Moloch can often quickly cloak and heal the individual tanks that are being focused down, meaning that if the enemy does not think to scan the tanks will survive the encounter, all while the invisible tanks continue to deal splash damage. Furthermore, when Asmodeus' units are in the Throne region of the map, their slow speed hampers healing at the spawns, and so a few Yamato blasts from the Messiah can slowly but surely make the tanks vulnerable to a rush. Moloch's heal can quickly undo these efforts, and is actually the only method of healing units that Hell has outside of their base heals. A final way to aid pushes is by coordinating with other Hell heroes to achieve their individual objectives. Cloaking Sammyazza can help him get in range to surround an enemy hero with hallucations for a kill. Cloaking Abbadon increases her speed, allowing her to position fungal growth more easily as well as moving at the same pace as the Flayed. And Moloch can wear down key buildings under the Devil's dark swarm more effectively than other heroes; the dark swarm cuts down the ranged damage from the enemy's units, allowing him to just attack the building while not taking much damage, but in case the enemy attempts to surround him he can quickly blink away to safety, unlike any other Hell heroes. Killing Heroes Moloch deals a lower amount of damage than most heroes at the beginning of the game, so it is usually recommended that Moloch builds up XP killing enemy units first before attempting to outright kill a hero. Early in the game, enemy heroes will often escape prior to dying, meaning that the time spent trying to kill the hero is also time not spent getting stronger killing elites. For the first portion of the game, Moloch should try to attack the enemy at range from within Hell's lesser demon mob, because the lesser demons will distract enemy fire and absorb damage in lieu of Moloch. If Moloch is being focus-fired by the enemy units, moving him away into the lesser demon mob usually will shake off reasonable Heaven players as most won't risk an ambush by the other Hell players. Moloch should heavily utilize Blink and cloak to ensure his own survival at this point in the game; dying once early on heavily reduces Moloch's ability to kill off enemy units, reducing his overall increase in XP. Once Moloch is stronger, he can begin hunting heroes more and more effectively. Moloch should generally try to avoid 1v1 battles between himself and other heroes, as often this will result in a loss for Moloch early on. In terms of getting an actual kill, faster moving heroes, like Uriel or Jehoel, tend to make for poor targets as they can usually pull away before Moloch can kill them off. Heroes that can be targeted by anti-air are especially vulnerable to Moloch; heroes like Raphael or Nathaniel are fairly slow and can also be targeted with scourges, which can drastically reduce their HP in the middle of an encounter. Be careful not to waste scourges, especially after the Gate has fallen; enemy anti-air will often target scourges that are sent haphazardly, and Moloch is left depleted of energy. Instead, cloaking a scourge will result in a surprise attack. Notes According to the game creator, the game utilizes Blizzard's EXP system, and as a result Moloch only gets XP for killing blows; however, playing experience indicates this system is a bit less consistent. Either way, try to get as many final hits as possible. Essentially, Moloch starts off the game with a healthy amount of EXP, which is why his base damage is considered to be only 50 while his starting damage is much higher. He will lose 20% of his current EXP on death, but this means the stronger Moloch is, the larger the drop in power will be. Although Moloch's cap during the course of normal gameplay is usually at +513, in odd cases (after killing God or Throne) the damage cap will be +538. Why this is is currently unknown.